“Who are You?”

Alice was asked this question by the famous hookah-smoking caterpillar on the mushroom in the children’s classic ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Poor little Alice was a little confused by this, as she had always believed she was Alice. Now, suddenly, she wasn’t so sure…

You’re about to have an ‘Alice’ moment yourself, so sit down and take a deep breath, while I get it over and done with as quickly as possible. You see, the thing is that if you believe you are a Leo, you’re probably a Cancer actually. Aargh! How can this be? I hear my readers scream. I know Leo’s traits backwards, and I am a Leo!!!

I’m sorry. I stopped doing charts for about five years when I discovered this problem, but eventually I decided that I’m not in the business of perpetuating falsehoods. My mission is to help you find your true self, not to help you preserve myths about yourself even if you do hold them dear.

You see, the dates that were set for the Sun Signs, ie 21 March being the beginning of Aries, were decided upon around about 2000 years ago. At that time, they were accurate. What most astrologers have failed to take into account, however, is that the stars themselves actually move, albeit so slowly that you can hardly notice it. In your lifetime, it won’t be noticeable, but over a period of 2000 years… Well, let’s just say that the difference is now so considerable that less than 30% of people’s Natal Sun (the position of the Sun at the moment of birth) is actually in the place that the newspapers (and most western astrologers) say it is.

So, why don’t other astrologer’s take this into account? Well, you should probably ask them myself. I’ve heard a few explanations that didn’t seem really valid to me, but I think, for the most part, no-one really wants to have to say this to a potential client. What I did was this. I used a rectified calculation method, so that the planets were placed in their real positions on the chart, and then interpreted the chart for my clients without mentioning this little problem at all. The results were completely astounding; people would usually start getting quite uncomfortable after a few minutes and start muttering things about me now knowing them a little better than they thought they were letting themselves in for.

After the interpretation was done, I’d tell them the bad news, and they would have their ‘Alice’ moment. It seemed to work well that way; there would be a long silence on the other end of the line while the client tried very hard to process what I’d just told them, and then I’d be asked to repeat myself. I felt sorry for them, really, becuase I know how it feels. All my life I believed I was a Leo; I really made that a part of my identity, and having it suddenly taken away was almost more that I could bear. I am an astrologer, after all! Part of my five year hiatus from astrology was because I was struggling to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t who I’d always assumed myself to be. The more I thought about it though, the more the Cancerian picture made sense when applied to myself, albeit on a more subtle level.